


The Asset, The Mission

by lost_in_dark_places



Series: The Asset, his Mission [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Being the Asset, Bucky Barnes is not okay, Bucky Barnes is the Asset, But he's doing better than Steve thinks he is, Gen, Post CA:TWS, post deprogramming & therapy, the Asset takes care of Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 10:08:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3525230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_in_dark_places/pseuds/lost_in_dark_places
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a person is hard, and sometimes Bucky can't get there, but he can still take care of Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Asset, The Mission

**Author's Note:**

> All standard disclaimers apply: They aren't mine, the universe isn't mine; I'm just playing here, don't mind me.
> 
> This is my first fanfic, one of the first things I've ever posted period, and entirely unbeta'd. please be gentle.

They return to the apartment at 21:00 hours and the Asset does a thorough security sweep. Steve takes a shower as soon as the Asset clears the bathroom and by the time he is done the Asset has cleared the rest of the space. The Asset waits for Steve to settle into bed before retreating to his own room. The Asset still finds it odd to sleep in a bed, but Steve insisted, explaining that the kitchen chairs are not appropriate for rest, neither is the floor in front of Steve’s bedroom door, or the floor in front of the apartment door. The Asset sleeps where he is ordered to, and is soon sleeping the sleep of the well-conditioned.

At 01:00 the Asset awakens long enough to do a second sweep of the apartment, this started as a compromise between Steve, who thought the Asset should get more rest, and the Asset, who thought they should really sleep in shifts. Now it was just part of the routine, a minor objective and hardly an inconvenience, still the Asset knew Steve would be happier if he stopped breaking his sleep like this. The matter was flagged for review, and the Asset returned to bed and sleep.

At 05:00 the Asset awoke and began preparing breakfast. Left to his own devices Steve never ate enough to maintain optimal performance. Steve allowed the Asset to monitor his intake so long as the Asset ate as well. The Asset approved: this way they were both properly maintained. The Asset cooked a box of pancakes, a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs.

At 05:50, the coffee maker kicked on, and Steve came shuffling out soon after. The Asset portioned out their meal, and they sat down to eat. Steve preferred to eat together even though the person of James Buchanan Barnes disturbed him when the Asset was engaged. The Asset considered disengaging, but felt reluctant to do so. Decision: observe and asses.

About half-way through the meal Steve began to look concerned. Several times he seemed to want to speak then suppress the urge. The wrinkle between his brows appeared, then the stubborn turn of lips. Assessment: Steve is distressed. The Asset disengaged.

“Has somebody been kicking puppies, I didn’t know about?” Bucky asked, his voice rasped a little with disuse.

Steve jerked almost to attention. “Well, you know, Buck. . . . it just bugs me when you go away like that.” Steve kept his voice even and gentle, like he might scare Bucky or something.

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere, Stevie,” Bucky said with a laugh, “Sometimes it’s easier to work off a different mindset is all.”

“I wish you wouldn’t is all.” Steve said, with that look on his face, the I-can-do-this-all-day face, the one that meant a back alley fist fight was in the near future or recent past. Bucky was still amazed at how often Steve was wearing that face, and still wondered how the hell he managed to keep this kid alive all those years when he was 90 pounds wet and sickly to boot.

Mostly Bucky was tired, in a way that had nothing to do with slightly broken sleep patterns. He wanted to reengage the Asset and walk away, but that would be unproductive, unhealthy, and down right rude; so Buck took a deep breath and waded in. “I don’t wanna piss you off, and I don’t want ta fight.” He said, “but I don’t know how to explain this without. . . .” words failed, Bucky shook his head and stood up. Steve moved to follow him but Bucky waved him back down, “I made you that breakfast, Punk, you better fuckin’ eat it.”

“But you didn’t make it!” Steve said, leading with that stubborn goddamn chin beggin’ for a punch.

“What, somebody break in here with a Bucky suit, Rogers?” Bucky snorted, “No, I know, it was Hydra makin’ sure you eat right. Bet you think they uploaded me with your daily caloric requirements and shit, and how to cook all your favorite foods, right?”

“Well, how the hell would he know any of that?” Steve demanded, and Bucky was sick of him talking about the Asset like he was someone else.

“ _I_ would know, because two months ago after our first mission _I_ heard the doctors tellin’ you that you don’t eat enough to properly support your fucking metabolism when you’re runnin’ aroun’ _gettin’ shot at,_ an’ if ya didn’t start takin’ better care you were gonna wind up dead, especially since you just let yourself bleed all over the place instead usin’ basic first aid in the damned field like anyone _without a goddamn death wish_.” Bucky realized he’d started gettin’ a bit loud towards the end’a that, but it served Stevie right, the damned idiot.

Steve for his part was gapin’ like a grounded fish, “That’s when he—but I didn’t think you heard that—“

“I. Was. Standing. Right. There.” Bucky punctuated his words with a finger to the table top, and was vaguely proud that he didn’t put his finger through the table: because The Asset had been right there clutching a knife and watching the doctors like a hawk, because he knew what doctors did to super soldiers, damnit, and they weren’t pullin’ that shit with Stevie. (He had been aware of the Agent with a gun on’im too, waiting to put him down if he tried to do anything with that knife, even if Stevie hadn’t been, but Bucky was pretty sure he coulda got Steve out if things went sideways. You don’t bet against the Asset and live.)

Steve didn’t seem to know what to say.

Bucky pushed his hands back through his hair, and tried to gather himself. “Look, I don’t ‘go away’, okay?” he used the ridiculous “airquotes” people make these days, “I’m always here, it’s just sometimes I get. . . .I can’t. . . .process, everything.” Bucky swept his arms out, taking in the whole slightly retro apartment and all the world outside it, “I’m not. . . .I was, like. . .a toy, they only took me out for a certain thing, and. . . .they, I don’t have skills out side of. . . .” Steve was looking all devastated now, and Bucky knew he was botchin’ this whole thing again, “What I’m tryin’ ta say is it’s fuckin’ hard to be a person now, okay, I haven’t been a person for somethin’ short of a decade, and most of that was them training personhood outa me, so it just fuckin’ hard, okay?”

“Buck—“

“No, I gotta say this shit, an’ you gotta listen, Stevie, ‘cause—“ The words stopped again, and Bucky wished he had something to throw, something to break, that he could just be the Asset again and not have to _think_ like this for a minute, but he couldn’t stop, because he finally had Steve’s attention and he didn’t know if he could get it back again if he lost it and _everything was too damned much goddamnit_ —

Somebody was touching him and he lashed out because touch was always bad and never meant anything good and there was no air and he just couldn’t even—

“. . .Okay, just sit. . . .with you here, Buck. . . .alright. . . .just breathe, okay, like this. . . .In 1-2-3-4. . . .” Steve’s voice led him back to Steve’s face floating kinda crooked with a line a blood trailin’ down from his nose, breathing slow and deep, leading Bucky back home.

“. . . So I mighta went away that time.” Bucky admitted.

Steve looked stunned, and then he started laughing, and after a second Bucky started laughing too, and some how they wound up on the floor (embarrassingly, Bucky was already on the floor) hands fisted in each other’s shirts laughing (maybe not only laughing) into each other's shoulders.

* * *

“So that’s what happens when you can’t. . . “ Steve says making an abortive little gesture. Bucky sighs, he feels sticky, exhausted, and a little disgusted with the damp patch he left on Steve’s shirt; not at all consoled by the fact that he had a matching one. They move apart with quiet efficiency, carefully avoiding eye contact.

Bucky clears his throat, “I don’t know, It’s— I want to freeze, but I can’t freeze because. . .” a frozen soldier is a dead soldier, and that ain’t even Hydra talkin’, “. . .but the Asset never freezes, the Asset observes and assesses, and solves the problem in the most efficient manner. The Asset knows how to ignore extraneous detail and focus on the mission. It’s just. . . a very streamlined view of the world, so I don’t get. . . .overloaded.” Bucky sighs again.

“. . . .but the Asset is you?” It sounds like Steve didn’t mean for that to be a question, like maybe the statement got away from him a little.

“The Asset.” Bucky says, “The Asset was always me, stripped down. They took things, and they—they added things and the fucked me right up, but if the Asset wasn’t me then I wouldn’t have been able to come back. I—I am the Asset.” It was hard to say, almost. It tasted a little like bile and blood. Like Hydra. But that didn’t make it any less true.

Steve looks like he wants to call bullshit, but Steve didn’t have that right, and something on Bucky’s face musta told him so. “So. . .sometimes you just. . .fall back into. . .I just, I’m not sure that’s a good thing, leaning on what they—“ Steve bites his lip.

“Look,” Bucky licks his lips, “Look, I know you don’t wanna hear this, but. . . .What, what Hydra did is part of me now. It’s, its me, they. . . .It changes you, even normal, whatever, the. . . .” Bucky shakes his head, he talked to all the shrinks, and read the fuckin’ books and got deprogrammed, but this shit is never gonna sit right in his mouth, “I’m never gonna be what I was before they got me, I’m different now, and that’s—that’s okay, so long as—no body’s gettin’ hurt or anything. I can use the—the skills I learned, dealing with them, and if those skills—if the Asset is useful to me and I can use that for my own good and yours, than I should. I should take that away from them, and put it to my own use.”

And it seemed like Bucky finally got it out right cause just like that, all Steve’s confusion firms over to that trademarked Captain America determination, “Damn right you should.” he says, nodding with his heroically squared jaw and shit. Jesus, instant propaganda poster, just add lost cause.

So Bucky buckles down to spill the last of it, just, you know, get it over with, “Thing is, it could be—you know—bad, for me. In the long run. If I—It can be tempting to. . .to overuse the Asset. I’m never gonna get used to being a person again if I can just turn it off like that.” Bucky snapped his fingers.

Steve nods, but seems hesitant to say anything.

“You usually draw me back out,” Bucky blurted, “If I’ve been. . . .operating as the Asset too long, you get this look, and I know. . . .I gotta work my way back up again.”

Steve nods again, but now Bucky can see the wheels turning in the little punk’s head and braces himself: “You know, Asset-you seemed really focused on me,” Steve says, with that goofy-sly smile creepin’ across his mouth, “Does that make me your Mission?”

Part of Bucky want’s to hide his face and groan at what Steve calls his sense of humor, but truth is truth, “Don’t be an idiot,” he says, “You were always my mission, Punk.” he pushes Steve, and Steve goes sprawling, but comes bouncing back.

“You say that now, Jerk.” Steve says taking a swipe Bucky barely has to duck, and they keep sniping at each other, but Bucky’s head is full of that sickly boy he used to sit with, teachin’ him how to breath again; and that skinny bastard he kept pullin’ outa back alleys beat to shit; and that green-ass “Captain” dressed in a flag that never watched his fuckin’ six, _Jesus, Rogers, do ya wanna die young?_

And if there’s one true thing in this world it that Steve Rogers was always his mission.


End file.
